imagine hearing “hall of the mountian king” for the first time in 1875. the sheer chaos imagine being some norwegian aristocrat and sitting down for a nice day at the symphony and getting your entire wig and life snatched right before your very eyes
This was while working the register at Trader Joe’s. Luckily, she was buying scotch, so I carded her just to be 100% sure that it was in fact Professor Trelawney. I absolutely shamelessly flirted with her.
“I’m sorry Ms. Thompson, my hands are tied. If a customer looks under 40 I have to ask for ID. It’s the law.”
And then she said possibly the most ominous thing that anyone has ever said to me:
A lot of things have been found on ancient clay tablets.
The world’s oldest beer recipe (praise to Ninkasa - hic!) yes;
Food recipes (flatbreads, roast quail and venison stew among others) yes:
The world’s oldest complaint letter (a messed-up shipment of copper) yes;
But the world’s first break-up letter….?
Not beyond belief (which is what makes it work) except that the “3 days ago” in the image was April 1st, its uncropped version has “satire” at the top and is tagged “April Fools” at the bottom. :-D
It’s still April Foolery of a high order, and succeeds because people like to think “they were just like us” - which they were, as shown by the very real complaint to Ea-Nasir the copper merchant (and that’s not the only one he received!)
A bit more work to get the distinctive and rather pompous style of these translations spot-on would have made it truly convincing - especially if the “original tablet” was less easily identified. That cylinder is real, it’s in the British Museum, and it’s a “Look at my good deed, please reward me boss” plea from the King of Babylon to his favourite deity.
Babylonian cuneiform is right up there with Pitman and Gregg shorthand for getting a lot into a little space, so the full (and correct) translation of the cylinder - by Paul-Alain Beaulieu, who is
also the author of “The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556-539 B.C.”
(1989) - is after the cut.
A plain and easy account of British Fungi with especial reference to the esculent and economic species M C Cooke with coloured plates of thirty four species and numerous woodcuts Edinburgh John Grant 1904 [third edition]